Overview:
Hardly thrilling to behold, the S80 is a stoic, Swedish sedan that assures you with a safe and comforting presence. In the front-wheel-drive T5, power comes from a 240-hp turbo four teamed up with an eight-speed automatic. The T6 offers a turbocharged inline-six that makes 300 hp with all-wheel drive and a six-speed automatic. Engineered for drama-free driving, its handling is sedate and the ride is composed, making it an excellent highway cruiser. The S80 drives as conservatively as it looks. Official Photos and Info – 2014 Volvo S80 »

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The S80 has always been something of a wallflower, with the only excitement in its sheetmetal being the way its taillights and the sides of the trunk flow down onto the shoulder lines that pass over the rear wheels. That styling element first debuted on the original S80 in the late 1990s, and eventually became a hallmark for the Volvo brand. Since then, the rest of the lineup has aesthetically leaped the large sedan.

For 2014, Volvo has imbued the S80 with new bumpers front and rear, and it has fussed with the grille and intakes. The new lower front fascia is packed with more horizontal lines than before, teaming with new slats in the grille and front intakes to add visual width. There also are new rectangular running lights embedded in a new, full-width lower front intake. Altogether, the usual trickery works; the S80 appears a bit more hunkered down, if not exactly more interesting to look at.

I Sensus New Technology’s Afoot

Just like the 2014 S60, XC60, and XC70, the S80 inherits Volvo’s new Sensus infotainment system. Sensus essentially is a suite of connected apps that enable internet browsing (when parked), internet radio streaming, Google Maps and search, traffic info, free parking locator, and weather updates that are accessible via a central seven-inch touch-screen display. The screen actually is the same unit found in last year’s S80 (which wasn’t a touch screen), but Volvo adapted it to respond to touch inputs with the addition of an array of infrared beams that crisscross the display. Break the beams, and the system calculates where your “touch” was intended; the benefit to the beam-based system is that unlike capacitive touch screens, Sensus can be operated by gloved hands. Or any pointy object, really.

Besides Sensus, the S80 also has a newly optional digital gauge cluster. The display offers drivers three themes: Elegance (simulated traditional gauges), Eco (fuel-consumption info, green background), and Performance (central tachometer with embedded digital speed readout, red background). The interior benefits from new ambient lighting in the cup holders, door-handle cutouts, seat controls, and storage bins. A heated steering wheel and windshield are now available as well. Finally, Volvo’s full suite of safety gear can be fitted to the S80, including City Safety and Pedestrian Detection with auto braking.

The S80 might be long in the tooth, slow-selling (just 3277 of them sold in the U.S. last year), and a hair away from irrelevance thanks to the more modern, better-looking, less-expensive, and nearly identically sized S60, but it’s also the last truly incognito Volvo. That could change when the next-generation Swedish flagship arrives. The car has been previewed by two concepts in the past two years—the Concept Universe and Concept You—and, in something of a mold-breaking move, likely will feature only four-cylinder power and a modular platform.